Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Chapter 2 focuses on the act of witnessing and the fallibility of memory.

In his 1972 book, No Name in the Street, Baldwin recounts the trauma of seeing Don Sturkey’s 1957 photograph of White supremacists harassing 15-year-old Dorothy Count as she walked to her recently desegregated school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Baldwin claims he was so moved by the image, he promptly returned to the US after years of living in France. As Glaude observes, however, the photograph could not have served as the catalyst for Baldwin’s move, as the events in Charlotte postdate his return. Glaude uses this episode to support his claim that trauma fragments memory. Baldwin confronted his traumatic past during his time in Paris, working through his abusive childhood, the death of a close friend, and the racism he experienced in the US. France provided the critical distance he needed to become a truthful poet. His poetry transformed his experiences into art, bore witness to what many had forgotten, and called attention to the lasting impacts of slavery, systemic discrimination, and the willful blindness of White people to the violence that maintains their supremacy. His writings bear witness for those who did not survive, and for those who survived wounded and broken.